Dynamis Tempus
by NY GE Pyromaniac
Summary: Second Installment of my TRJxOC trilogy Sequel to Time Will Tell . She never wanted to look back - never meant to. But she had to learn the hard way that he was right. FULL SUMMARY INSIDE. R
1. Prologue

Rating – M

Pairing – Tom Riddle Jr. x OC

Summary: Thalia Espinoza left behind so much in an attempt to put an end to what would have resulted in generation after generation of suffering. She never dared to even take a second, deeper look at what terrified her to the point of not only leaving the person she loved most in all of her miserable lives but also to the point of denying herself one of her most basic rights as a woman: her child. She never dared to look again, but – in all reality, after what happened in the first piece of her all-encompassing misery – she never stopped seeing. Now nearly a fully grown woman, hiding out in a completely new yet adaptable world, she seeks to finish this – to close the mystery of what latched onto her and when. Determined to do it on her own and to never look any further back than necessary, she takes on every bit of the challenge that she faced and, about two steps in – four years' time and a drug addiction paid already, mind you – she is forced to face the facts: Alexius was right. In so many fucked up ways….

**A/N:** For those of you who read the first part and have come back: YAY! I still love you guys = you already know this. Well, as promised. Here's the second installment of the trilogy and quicker than I expected. Of course, that's because I'm still working on it and barely even have the next chapter started. But I couldn't wait to get this up. Hopefully you guys enjoy this as much as you enjoyed the first part. If you do, you already know what to do. =) Now, as for you who are just joining in on this mess xD, I recommend that you read **_Time Will Tell _**first so as to understand what the hell is going on. I'll try my best to answer any questions that linger around here, but it really is crucial you read the first installment to understand this one. As has always been my policy, if you have any questions, ask. I don't bite, I promise. If anything is still unclear even after I've supposedly explained it in here, just ask: I'll be glad to clarify. =)

Now, onto...

* * *

_**Dynamis Tempus  
**  
_By: NY GE Pyromaniac

_**Prologue**_

* * *

I couldn't tell you how many days had passed since I crashed into this place. Not right now anyway. Perhaps tomorrow…or the day after. Not right now, though. Not like this.

"Who taught you about shooting up between your toes, baby?" the blonde haired, gray eyed demon asked of me as he took a firm and barely gentle hold of my left ankle, pulling me to him across the floor. The blanket he'd laid down upon the wood-grain slabs that didn't fit together at all over the dirt foundation had, after so many impaired and substance addled movements on both our parts, furled up and amassed itself beneath my thighs, causing an intense discomfort. My thighs already felt sore and painful after experimenting with the backs of my legs (which is why I remembered the spaces between my toes in the first place); the twisted bundle beneath them only made it worse.

I groaned in protest at both the yanking about and the discomfort on the backs of my exposed thighs (okay, 'exposed' is an understatement for mere underwear, but hey…), ready to tell him to mind his business when his mouth clamped down on mine. Absolutely flying and tasting the Bacardi Limón on his breath, I found my sudden inability to answer him hi-fucking-larious and burst out laughing against his mouth.

He snickered too against my mouth. "You're so sexy when you make those sounds," he murmured and then proceeded to finish the business in between my toes.

I barely felt the needle pricks anymore. That shit scared me more than you can even imagine; but the slow, gentle caress of the rushing drug reintroducing itself into my system calmed me…. Well, it made me forget why I'd gotten scared in the first place at any rate.

The blonde chuckled throatily, straight from his hollow chest, and pulled the needle out of my foot. "You love that, don't you, baby?" he asked, shifting my leg onto the floor – so that I now lay completely prostrate – and moved forward to hover over me, looming, like always. Like the blended and bleeding colors that began to erupt on the edges of my vision and like the overall rushing throughout me. No, this rushing had nothing to do with…with what I ran from. It did not come of another Universe or from an otherworldly creature. It did not free me in such a way as that did. In fact, if I ignored the colors and the kaleidoscopic blur of images that now danced around me – a raven haired duo, one with gray eyes and one with black, an oval-faced girl and her charming partner, a caramel toned protector – I could say that it didn't free me at all. No, this…this rushing _loomed_ all around me…bound me to this demon above me – made me his without my consent and with every fiber of my existence. Again, his mouth fell upon mine and, with his prolonged suctioning, tracing, and probing, I gave in once more to the sweltering hot yet ice cold waves of rolling pleasure.

Up and down, in and out, round and round and round and round and round…. It carried on all night, past the crack of dawn, and a bit more with another three hits of the liquid pleasure. And, to tell you the truth, as I pulled my jeans, my camisole, my shoes and my jacket back on the next afternoon, I really had no recollection of what the fuck I did with the blonde. I couldn't remember (or perhaps I just didn't want to – I really have no clue) what I'd succumbed to. What he'd done to me. What I'd _let_ him do to me…. All I can say, and with all certainty, stands – and will stand for who knows how long – as this: it will happen again within the next few hours.

Long, strong arms wound themselves around my diminished waist and hugged me tight to the solid form that had, until then, shifted around in the room behind me, gathering his clothes as well. His lips burned their usual tattoo into my neck before his mouth opened slightly to allow my earlobe passage between his teeth. He nibbled softly, gently, tenderly for a few seconds before whispering, "Ready to go?"

"Mhm," I murmured tiredly. He released me so I could pick up my pack and sling it over my shoulder. "What's the date?" I asked, squinting through the grime covered window of the abandoned building.

"The nineteenth," he answered in a yawn. I turned to him, arching a brow expectantly. He observed me confusedly for a minute before adding, "…of September?" His confused stare didn't fade until I rolled my eyes and sighed in exasperation. He sucked his teeth and rolled his eyes too. "1997, Thali, for fuck's fucking sake! God damn it! What _is_ it with you and the year? It changes every twelve God damned months – not every day! Fuck man!" he'd turned on his heel at 'twelve' and had by now gotten the lobby door open and stepped out into the dim daylight of the cloudy day.

I sighed. Of course it would happen again tonight. How could it not? "Rex," I said softly a few seconds later, outside and by his side at the corner of what he'd pointed out a few weeks back as Eighth Avenue and some street…. Bleeker, I think. Maybe 42nd?

He sucked his teeth again, but took up my hand in his. "Wanna go to Ray's for…" he checked his cell, "lunch slash dinner?"

Nodding, I let him tug me along. And as we walked and talked about the most absurd things (the flow of the Hudson River, the tone of the buildings angular facades and other meaningless shit), I pinpointed, once again, why I do this to myself. Why I let him pull me in so.

"So, are you ever gonna tell me what you were doing in the Hudson that day?" he asked.

Smirking, I stood on my tippy toes and kissed him, pulling his lower lip into my mouth and biting down firmly on it. "No," I laughed when I released it and ran into Ray's crummy pizzeria.

"Hey, Thali," called Ray, a large and muscular man – mid to late thirties, maybe – from behind the counter.

"Hey," I answered offhandedly as Rex entered in after me and caught me up in his embrace.

"Didn't classes start already, Rex?" Ray asked, punching a dough ball down.

Rex snickered and answered, "Graduated two years ago, Ray. Four slices and two cokes for me and my lady, yeah?"

Again, how could I not? Rex didn't know shit about my past and practically forbade any kind of a bright future. Remember how I said that I'd number my own days if necessary? Well, he made it unnecessary by numbering them for me.

Night had fallen and darkened the sky as much as it could in this city by the time I'd sobered up completely and by the time the questions came back as well as the disgust. Rex sucked his teeth over his seventh slice and swallowed his mouthful of fries. I tore my gaze from the alley across the street where it had fallen in my lamented reverie and eyed him, bored.

"For someone so fucked in the head by his own supply, you have an incredibly acute sense of feeling," I commented before standing and walking out of the tiny shithole.

Three things had happened by the time he caught up with me on the next corner. First, I'd panicked again, feeling that without him I really had nowhere to go. How the fuck could I get around New York City without the dealer slash map? Second, I'd caught sight of something…well, _impossible_ across the street…something – some_one_, actually. Tall, broad-shouldered, lithe and inexplicably _living_. Third, I'd made to take a step toward the honey eyed mass of a man and then felt a firm hand grip my right upper arm. "No," I protested as I jerked back with detained inertia and, drowning Rex's coaxing and apologies, I shouted, "NO! JORGE! JORGE!"

But all of it – from the spasm Rex gave before shoving me from him, scared that I'd turned squeal on him, right down to the brightened and burning blue streaks in those honey eyes as they locked with mine, wide with surprise at both seeing and being seen – nulled and fell to the wayside as the warning horn blared into my left ear. The owner of the horn, the M20, couldn't swerve away from me even if he'd tried. A familiar and infinitely more painful spasm rocked my frail form and maneuvered me right into the center of the path of the oncoming steel mammoth.

I don't even think I screamed….


	2. Acts of Creation

**A/N: **Okay, I officialy give you all permission to hate me XD. I know I've taken wayyyyy too long to update and the quality of this chapter - especially for how confusing it is - doesn't make up for that time. But, at the risk of sounding like a brat and whiney, I've had so much shit going on in my life that I wish it was even funny. First, my laptop crashed and I needed to get a new harddrive; when they FINALLY got it back to me, they'd lowered the amount of RAM I had so I had to send it back again. By the time I got it back the second time, it'd been gone around a month to a month and a half. So, I got to work. Then, all hell broke loose on the Atlantic coast and Sandy decided to destroy my home and - worst of all - take away my power and, consequently, my internet. So I couldn't write and I couldn't even keep myself busy. On top of all the damage and trauma, I was losing my mind becuase I wanted to write and I couldn't. Then, as I got my power back and life returned SOMEWHAT back to normal, I got hit with one of the worst cases of writers' block that I've ever had and wanted to launch myself off of my roof. Again, I'm really not making excuses, I'm just letting you guys know why the hell I've taken so long and, also again, I apologize for how blehhh and confusing this chapter is. But I promise, I will make up for this confusion and the lost time with better crap =). And to all of you who wished for my wellbeing and worried about me and messaged me all throughout this time, thank you so much. I really appreciate all of your support and I love all of you for how kind and gentle you are. You're amazing people and I wish you all an eternally safe and happy holiday season and life. You all deserve it. Oh, and to that person in particular whom I promised to help, please don't think I've forgotten about you. I really haven't, I've just been swamped. Now that I'm getting this chapter up and can have a bit of time to just relax a tiny bit, I will get to that and, like I said, I'll either type it up or scan it to send to you, sweetheart.

Now, for those of you who've waited so patiently, without further ado, Chapter One!

Enjoy and of course give your thoughts and questions ^_^

* * *

_**Dynamis Tempus**_

By: NY GE Pyromaniac

**Chapter One: _Acts of Creation_**

* * *

_"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." – Pablo Picasso_

* * *

_I. __Traveler Physiology_

_A. __Allows for leeway in terms of 'Separation' but not more than the time it takes to FULLY Separate._

_a. __Dependent on each Traveler_

_b. __FULL Separation can be halted either by death or Reconnection. _

_i. __Death – both pieces die_

_ii. __Reconnection – painful, but whole again (in the physiological sense of the word)._

_iii. __Otherwise, if completed, two separate pieces/people._

_B. __Leeway (defined loosely as a kind of open slot of sorts) possibly extends into Alexius' Theory of Attachment, subsection on Relevance to Fundamental Human Mechanics point seven of Life Transference and Maintenance: Forms Lesser than that of Master. _

_a. __He poses the theory that, during the very first seconds of Separation, if the conditions are suitable, then as the pieces of the Traveler come apart, something can easily attach itself to either piece so long as it is compatible._

_i. __i.e. human Soul._

_II. __THEORY: Attachment subsection Thalia Espinoza, 'Master of Time'; hypothesis_

_A. __A piece of someone else's soul is inside of me, trying to find a place to stick_

_III. __THEORY: Attachment subsection Thalia Espinoza, 'Master of Time'; null hypothesis_

_A. __My soul isn't broken, so it cannot attach._

* * *

Christmas in New York fucking sucks, man. I mean, okay yeah, Rockefeller Center? No one can beat that shit right there. And the Radio City Musical Hall Christmas Spectacular…okay, I'll give it to the Big Apple there too. But…and okay, yeah the food stomps on even the most delicious foods I've tasted so far anywhere else, you know, because you can find it all here at whatever the fuck time you feel like. Fucking two-fifty-three in the morning and you have a craving for some Guatemalan Chicken Campero or some Ecuadorian Empanadas de Verde? Fuck it, get your ass to Queens and get some. They'll have it, I promise. But, fuck, man. The _tourists_! I hate every single one of them. I wish they would all line up at the nearest train station to them and file down toward the nearest set of tracks, wait for the train to show up and jump down. Cruel? Drastic? Probably. But you try getting your ass to class on time with Billy Mc-Let's-Take-A-Picture-of-This-Fearson stopping short in front of you and then standing there in the middle of the bloody sidewalk, trying to get a picture of a fucking hotdog cart. I hate them. I hate them all. And I hate them even more during the holiday season.

"Urgh!" I made, stopping and stepping sharply to my right to avoid a collision with yet another bloody tourist who had his entire Eastern European clan with him as well as at least five gigantic shopping bags (Macy's, Sak's, FAO Schwartz, etc.) per adult. "Fucking prick."

He rattled off something in what sounded like Russian to me, obviously annoyed at the tiny shove I gave him as he dug through his cheap Gucci knock-off purse (so at least one street vendor had already conned him), and I just kept on walking.

Weaving my way in and out of foot traffic, once or twice having to shove either a tourist or a jerk on a bike, I got myself over to 59th and Tenth Ave in one piece, but too late to even consider lunch.

"Thali, hey!" called one of my professors as I sped through the turnstiles at the entrance of the North Hall building of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He tried to engage me further than just my chin jerk in his direction, but I really couldn't spare the time and much less for the talkative man.

"Sorry, sir, I'm late. I'll catch up later, yeah?"

Smiling kindly, he nodded and waved me off as I pushed past a crowd of freshmen (obvious from the way they still gave a shit about how they looked and wore shit like clean shirts and even brushed their hair) to get to the staircase. I took the steps three at a time and got up to the third floor in less than a minute but still late.

The classroom door shut behind me as I slumped into an empty desk in the back and I caught my breath, Quinn (my programming professor) eyeing me through frosty blue eyes. "Sorry," I muttered as I took off my bag and rested it at my feet.

He merely stared at me a second longer, steely-eyed gaze never faltering, and then went back to his lesson. "As I was saying: pointers – one of the most powerful tools you'll have at your disposal in the C++ language – are not easy to get used to or to manage. But once you do, they will open up new horizons for you as a programmer. Let me see my videogame buffs…."

"What happened now?" the person next to me, my friend – Electra, asked as she flipped her hand up in response to Quinn's latest in-class survey thing.

I followed suit – as if he didn't already know – and answered her, "Fucking tourists, man. Plus, I had something to stop and take care of first."

"Ray?" she asked, her brows furrowing in a questioning frown.

I shook my head. "Not really important."

"You're barely passing this class, Thali."

Indignant over this new development, I protested. "I've gotten perfect scores on all of his fucking projects, how am I barely passing?"

Her brown eyes widened upon her elfish features giving her a maddened aspect as we lowered our hands and Quinn continued his rant in the background. "You haven't done any of the daily homework, you don't participate, you're always late, you disrespect him every chance you can –"

"He's annoying," I tried to defend myself, eyeing her resentfully. I'd only asked for one reason not a whole list.

"Thali, he'll fail you. Don't think he won't." Inhaling deeply, I bent down to extract my notebook and ignored her next few words: "Like you need another excuse to go back to Rex."

I straightened myself out in my seat and released the breath before getting back to my notes. Electra sucked her teeth beside me and turned her attention back to Quinn. She'd most likely held out hope that perhaps this time I'd actually spend time looking at my programming notes (or at least taking some) and participate in the mundane Muggle course, but to no avail. I'd pulled out my notes on Alexius' book once again and effectually made her leave me alone.

Electra, a witch from Colombia who'd come here to the US on a visa to study at the age of seventeen, had met me when I'd only just gotten released the hospital from my last overdose three years ago. She'd just gotten here and had, by recommendation of her father (an undercover Healer), scored a volunteer position at the same hospital where I'd already gotten myself checked in on several emergency cases – overdoses and motor vehicle accidents. Like most everyone else, she too looked down her nose at me when she first met me and I, as I'd accustomed myself to do with people like her, let my magic (what had formed from the amalgamation – if I can even call it that – of my baser magic and my newer essence) lash out at her. Usually one strand, fast and barely strong enough for a toddler to have conjured it and in the form of a simple shoving jinx, would hit people and they'd stumble and fall and I'd leave it at that, not really wanting hurt someone. But Electra, when my magic touched her, jumped a bit but didn't really react how I'd expected. She'd turned away from the chart she'd taken to organizing and fixed her gaze on me. "Eres bruja*," she'd said….

Needless to say or really even ever mention again because half the time I want to strangle her, Electra and I got past the animosity and went on to form a decent friendship. I hated her and wanted to drown her in boiling oil and she would do exactly that to me if I couldn't easily overpower and kill her. But let someone else other than she and I say these things about either one of us.

* * *

"Want some arepas**?"

"The sweet kind?" I asked as we made our way out of the swarming crowd of people shoving their way into the Stillwell Avenue train station.

She 'psshh'ed and asked, "Is there any other kind?"

Scoffing, I nodded and said, "Yeah, c'mon. We'll take the bus one stop further and pick up what we need from the supermarket on the way back home."

"Cool…. Um, Thalia?"

"Shut it, Electra."

"I'm just tryna –"

"I know. Shut up."

She pursed her lips but shut up and we strode down to the bus stop just outside the station. Once on the B74 and on our way toward my house, she asked, a poorly disguised curiosity blighting her voice, "Are you ever going to tell me who Alexius is?"

I scoffed and smirked at her. "You've learned to read ancient runes."

She scowled. "It's not like Quechua was written down."

"Well, no, it wasn't. Plus, fucking Atahualpa and Huascar weren't anywhere near Ireland and Scotland, were they?" She sucked her teeth impatiently and gave me a 'come on' look. I shook my head. "I already told you. It's done with. There's no need to dig up the dead."

"He or she is dead?"

A grimace pulled at my cheek and I half shrugged half slumped against one of the polls near the back door of the bus. _He may as well be_, the Realist reiterated, reminding me that cruelty doesn't fall victim to Time as we do and hers even less so as it forms a part of me.

Later that night found Electra and I sprawled out on my bed, our notes spread out beneath us and breathing somewhat heavily.

"That was the best," I told her and sat up properly with a sigh of contentedness.

She handed me her plate and sat up too. "Another reason why Colombians are the best."

"Pablo Escobar," I said flatly, sliding off of the bed, both plates in hand, and started off toward the kitchen.

"_One_ guy," she complained and shoved me lightly as she followed.

I scoffed and turned into the dark kitchen, reaching to switch on the light. I didn't need to, though. Someone already stood in the middle of my kitchen, wand lit, scarfing down the last few arepas that Electra and I had left over and which we'd decided to save for a snack later.

"I 'ope ya don' mind, poppet," said the intruder in an oily voice that slid like melting ice down my spine and kick started my instinct when it reached my tailbone.

"'Course not," I told him and launched the plates at him, stacked and Frisbee style, so as to distract him before I untethered a few strands of my magic from my core and shot them out of my hand in a red and white swirl. He easily sent the plates flying off track and into the wall with a tiny flick of his wand and prepared to block the seething and crackling strands of magic that flew at him in the form of a very powerful combination stunner. As one of them made contact with him (the other two expertly separated from the swirl and blocked with minor shields), effectively sending him stumbling backward a few steps and dazing him, I smirked and unleashed a few more strands, trying very hard to control each and every one. It didn't take a doctor to tell me that this person who'd snuck into my house didn't belong entirely to the human species – my stunners did that for me – but I didn't really need a crime scene on my hands either. Believe it or not, the Bureau of Magical Regulation here the in US has very strict rules on what did and didn't classify as human torture and possibly even stricter laws on animal cruelty. Werewolves and dryads fell under extremely protected and upheld laws here and now, so I just shot out more stunners at him, this time more tightly woven so as to avoid missing him.

"Thalia, move!" I heard Electra say. But I didn't quite process her words until, with the intruder out cold on the floor having received the full impact of my combination attack, I turned to her and saw her trying to block an incoming myriad of spells that had, at some point that I missed, shattered my windows. She blocked a red one and a violently pink one easily enough, veering them off to her left and right where they collided with a vase and a picture frame, but lost focus when an angrily sizzling blue one grazed her cheek and she screamed in certain agony, clutching her cheek and stumbling back into the division between the kitchen and the hallway. I realized, as I took a step toward her and had to jump back to avoid the same kind of fate or worse from a blindingly white but deviously Dark curse, that I didn't have time to check on her. Turning back to the windows, intending to blast them away even more in an attempt to get to the ones responsible for the attack, I had to regroup and plan again for I took a powerful surge of sinister magic right to the gut and got thrown back right into the fridge where I then slid to the floor.

Biting back a grunt of pain, I moved as quickly as I could and forced myself onto at least my knees only to have to duck and roll to avoid three more spells, one of them the violent green shade of the Killing Curse. "Electra!" I grunted and maneuvered my way to her, pulling her down to the floor with me as glass from the newly shattered wall clock showered us, nicking us here and there.

She whimpered and clutched her cheek but held her wand out. It took me a minute to realize that she'd conjured up a heavy shield and that the new _dong _and _ting_ sounds emanated from there as the spells ricocheted off of it. "I'm okay," she pushed out and nodded for me to go forward. "Go. It's you. They won't stop until you go. I'll hold them off."

I didn't understand her words but didn't try too hard to do so either. More glass and now spilled rice and cereal and juices showered us, painting us all sorts of random colors and caking us with grains, making it hard to even focus. The sugary and acidic liquids that poured into the minor cuts and scrapes didn't help either. But I knew that I needed to get her out of here – I needed to get her to her father. Although she held her hand firmly to her cheek, she couldn't staunch the blood flow and the thick, red fluid spilled freely through her fingers and over her pallid hand. 'Bad' didn't even begin to describe her injury and I couldn't let it get worse. So, I grabbed her, intending to – somehow, if I could just get my legs untangled from whatever had fallen on them after the last wave of spells – Disapparate us both away.

But as she jerked her elbow out of my hand and scowled at me, shouting, "GO!" and I felt a sharp pain shoot up both of my legs, I had no choice but to abandon that plan and roll over to both see what had happened to my legs and to avoid the impact of the five spells that had adopted a curved trajectory right toward me on the floor. "FUCK!" I yelled and squeezed my eyes shut as more pain shot up my legs, a distinct tearing sensation gripping them both at the calf, and as the spells made resonating impact less than a foot away from my cramped position right up against the base of the counter. A scream quickly stifled by something hard and another sharp pain, this time in the space between my shoulder blades on my back, so intense and deep running that I couldn't even let out a scream to release some of it made up the last few pieces of my sensed surroundings. After that, I only perceived – only knew and only felt – a hauntingly familiar darkness….

* * *

**_Tom_**

I've seen plenty of blood in my life, a lot of it spilled by my own hand. And I've seen a lot of dead bodies – nothing new.

So, when I stepped into the bloodbath left behind by some of the most vicious and _the _vilest of the Coalition, and came across the corpse of the petite young woman who they'd apparently deemed not important enough to take along with their obvious target, I felt that I wouldn't react any differently than when I'd seen Private Mills blasted right off the starboard side at Pearl Harbor. Each one of these scenes consisted of the very same basic details: blood, a body (sometimes with a name and sometimes without) and clues as to where to go next from there. But this one (as I should have known from the moment I awoke in the Marriott, still suffering the waning after effects of a terrible bout with the temporal fragmentation illness known to us only as Demolecularization), consisted of something else. To say the very least: it was different.

As I stepped over the charred remains of a disintegrated piece of paneling, careful not to step in too much blood or to step on the dead girl, and tried to scout the area (knowingly in vain) for the source of the residual panicked but incredibly potent magic, I immediately felt my own magic collide with something…off. Skipping over the idea that the source of the rusted and putrid stench – obviously the bloody wild werewolf the Coalition insisted on keeping among their ranks – still lurked somewhere around (because if such were the case, the animal would have already tried sinking its teeth into me, sick and weak as I was), I scanned the area again.

I hated second floor dwellings. "Fucking Espinoza," I muttered as I stepped as lightly as I could in a small circle, trying to take in every inch of my surroundings. "You should know better." And she really should. Bloody maniac, always trying to get herself killed. Honestly, how easily could this mess have gotten much bigger and much, much worse if the imbeciles in charge of the assault had thought to attack from the first floor? I mean, not only did this woman _choose_ to situate herself high up but not high enough, where anyone could have merely reached up and ripped her out of her bed, but she also had _no_ alarms or wards or anything protecting her home. You tell me, Muggle: is that a death wish or not?

Anyway, as I completed a second circle around the same small area, still unable to latch on to what felt so out of place, the girl on the floor – the dead one – stirred.

She whimpered, trying to either shift her somewhat tangled legs or to sit up. Something that sounded a lot like bone made a loud _crack_ and she stopped moving. For the longest millisecond I'd ever experienced in my life, only a ringing silence coated the scene, banging on giant bells to signal the oncoming sounds of distress and devastation…and their affect. She screamed. And, for another millisecond – the shortest of my life – it didn't go beyond just that: a scream. But then, as my eyes, already upon her broken and bloody form, finally – _finally _– took it all in and as I saw the faint outline of a scar on the inside of her left wrist (a triangle?) that matched perfectly yet somehow incongruously the mottled and blotched contortion of her face right then, I moved forward, something akin to panic or worry gripping my lungs tight.

"Stop it," I ordered her, for she'd begun to thrash her shoulders in pain and anguish, causing her to repeatedly bang her head hard on the floor. I didn't fully understand _why_ the anguish until I knelt beside her, gripped her wildly flaying left hand in mine and tugged gently at her upper body. Somewhere between her first scream and my tug, she'd begun to cry in earnest. But that anguished crying, as I tugged and as her left leg ripped clean off at the knee, morphed into something primal and guttural – from the very depths of her heart and soul. An agony deeper than the Atlantic gripped her and she released scream after scream and wail and wail of it, trying to empty herself of the physical and mental pain. And yet, with her blood flowing so freely and with me knelt beside her, frozen in a panic I'd felt only twice before, I knew she'd never rid herself of it all. Not like this. "Stay still," I ordered and, knowing that she didn't even hear me and mustering up all the strength I'd recuperated in these last days, gripped her hand and reached for her severed leg.

I must have grazed her open wound or tugged a bit too hard on her when I leaned forward for her leg because as I turned awkwardly on my knees to Disapparate toward the only place I could think to go, she inhaled mid-cry and screamed again. Thankfully, the vacuum of Apparition sealed us off from any and all forms of vibration and cut off the sound waves she produced, allowing for me to unfreeze myself and to think clearly. I'd already set the path for where we'd _pop_ up, but I had no idea how to really go about this. Because, although I could simply lie and tell Healer Villanueva that I'd found the girl this way in any nameless alleyway in New York City, he'd already seen my mark and tended to my forced Demolecularization. He would also see hers and if he'd shown discretion and kindness before by not pushing when I told him not to ask about what had happened to me, this time, I knew by the girl's screaming thoughts (_Villanueva! Electra Villanueva!_) he would not.

Upon Apparating into Healer Villanueva's 'office', still gripping the girl's hand and her severed leg, I looked up and met his gaze. "We need to talk," I told him and then gestured to the girl's wrist.

He'd seen my mark and tended to me as best as he could these last few months. He'd shown kindness at its purest and I didn't really question it. (I was a bit busy trying not to demolecularize.) But now, with his daughter dying at my knees and with her bearing the same triangular eye of Grindelwald on her wrist – _branded_ with it – as I did, I no longer even spared a thought for his possible indiscretion. He couldn't afford it.

"Explain or I finish her off."

He scoffed. "Do it." He stood from his seat in the corner of the makeshift operating room and took a step toward me. "You'll never," another step "ever again in your" another "miserable, half crocked piece of shit life," he stopped before me "see what you came here for, Tom Riddle." He smiled. "Never."

* * *

**_Alexius_**

The alarms sounded at three-fifty-three in the morning, jolting me from what I'd come to call sleep although its semblance to the actual realm of unconsciousness paled drastically in comparison.

"ALL HANDS ON DECK! ALL HANDS ON DECK! OPERATION 'BLUE BEACH' HAS BEEN COMPROMISED! COALITION SIGHTED! LOCKED ON AND READY TO ATTACK! ALL HANDS ON DECK!" came Gentry's voice over the master station.

"Fuck," I hissed and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, yanking my fatigues off the post nearest my head. Pulling them up my legs, I made my way out of the captain's quarters and down the numerous empty corridors toward the main artillery deck. "Where?" I demanded of an officer there who fiddled with the controls at the main board in the semicircular room, locking on to several targets at once, I assumed.

Adjusting some coordinates on the on-screen map to compensate for speed and trajectory miscalculations, he took a split second, wordlessly, to rap a bit too roughly on the top third screen of an eight screen panel suspended in front of him. Once the image stopped wobbling and focused, I could see the red outline on the green grid of the Coalition's second in command ship: the Fallen Wolf.

"Are we sure that they have –" I started to ask but a sharp intake of air from the officer followed by a seemingly reflexive attempt to jerk away from the control board (which he quickly snuffed) and his, "Enemy shots fired! Shields up! NOW!" stopped me. Of course they did. The confidence to strike now, with the biggest weight of advantage that we had on our side sleeping in the lower deck right next to the captain's quarters, came from only one end to this bloody battle. As the spells made contact with the rising shields – some just barely grazing by and actually landing with forceful _DONG!_s on the exterior of the hull – I could only think to do one thing: pray. _Just…just hold on, Spain. At least until I can find a way to get onto that ship…. Hold on…._

* * *

**_Tom_**

"No," I told the Healer. "No."

But he insisted on continuing on with the lies. "Yes, Tom." He gave me a saddened but stern look over his rectangular glasses, one reminiscent of the old fool to whom I owed even existing as I did here and now, and said, "I'm sorry. But there's no denying it. Not at this point." He then turned back around and continued his work on the girl, Electra. He'd reattached her leg easily enough and kept her awake just long enough to make her choke down some Skele-Gro and some Blood-Replenishing potion before easing her magically into unconsciousness. Now, he merely revised his work, sealing some minor cuts here and there, and hummed softly to himself. Not a single care in the world other than the injured girl before him.

Meanwhile, I leaned heavily on the slab of crooked and lumpy wood that he'd stacked on cinder blocks to make a desk of, trying to not lose myself again to the pervading weakness that loomed like the enclosing darkness. It weighed so much, pressed so heavily on not just my shoulders but my lungs and kidneys as well as my stomach and even my heart. It squeezed from the inside while outwardly it draped my in a darkness so warm and welcoming that, honestly, I had to think three or four times whether or not I really wanted to stay awake. Giving in would mean rest. Giving in would mean a bit longer away from…well, everything and it would mean not having to understand – not having to wrap my head around the bit of information Healer Villanueva had just dropped on me like a ton of bricks. Forgive the cliché, really, but…I don't know. I honestly just wanted to sleep, if only a week longer and I wanted to not understand just yet. But as much a gift as a speedy thought process presented as, this time – along with a few others, I suppose – it meant nothing more to me than another weight tied around my neck.

But what could I do? Nothing. If only for the bit of news that I didn't want to process but already had or if only for the other connecting piece to that, I had no choice but to grip the side of the wooden slab even tighter and grit my teeth to the point of nearly cracking them just to stay out of the welcoming darkness. If only for them, I had to – literally – hold my disintegrating body together.

* * *

**_Alexius_**

"Sir, please just wait for the task force to get here – they're trained specifically for –"

"Specifically for speedy results under loads of pressure," I finished for Gentry with a wan smile. "I know. And I do need speedy results and this definitely qualifies as a high pressure situation," I continued, adjusting the wrist strap on my right hand while a plebe made sure to securely fasten two more spare wands at each of my ankles. "But this is different, Sergeant. It's not just any hostage situation."

He looked ready to knock my lights out. But he inhaled deeply, calming himself, and persisted, "I know how big this is. But, Alexius," he eyed me nervously as he did whenever others surrounded us and he used my real name, "that's the _Fallen Wolf_. You already had one run in with them – they have the taste of your blood! Don't make it so easy for them –" He stopped short as I raised my hand.

I saluted him. "This discussion is over, Gentry. Back to your station. I need someone I can trust with my life keeping my six clear. Go."

For a moment, he seemed ready to disobey (and part of me really wanted him to, just to see what that looked like). But he didn't. He hovered there a moment more and then nodded with a curt, "Yes, sir. Good luck." Then he turned smoothly on his heel and stalked back to, presumably, the Operations and Temporal Control room.

"All set, sir. Remember that you only have three Shifts. Your Time Turner, should you need it, is…you know."

I smiled down at the young girl. "Thank you, Parkinson. You're relieved here. Go with Gentry and try to get some hands on."

Her eyes widened a bit, seemingly horrified, but she nodded excitedly all the same. "Sir, thank you, sir. I will. Good luck." She scuttled off a bit awkwardly (she was just barely fifteen), and left me there alone, thinking but not quite processing much more than strategy and numbers.

"Three Shifts, three wands, your Time Turner and coordinates set. Are you ready, Commander?" came Gentry's voice over the intercom for this room.

Turning just enough to catch a peripheral glimpse of him and a somewhat flustered Parkinson up in the control deck of the Operations and Temporal Control room that overlooked this one – the Apparition point, I gave him a thumbs-up and nodded once. I then turned back to the simple green tinted lamp that hung on the wall opposite me. As soon as it ignited, bright green, casting its light on the red one next to it, I turned on the spot and plunged into Apparition.

* * *

**_Thalia_**

Have you ever dreamt that you saw yourself sleeping and having a nightmare? Ever tried waking your sleeping self from that nightmare within that dream that, consequently, turns into a nightmare because you can't? Have you ever known _that_ particular feeling of helplessness? It sucks giant monkey balls. But it teaches you something: that amid the fear and pain and panic and sadness that grips us in our most horrifying moments, there's always the one constant – the one way out. Now, most people don't really like looking at it this way and I suppose you could take another angle if you'd like. But this angle, the one thing that stood out from these last four years' experience, stood as the only reminder that, despite the pain in my legs and my back and chest and the fear burning away through the pit of my stomach as I lay there, bleeding away like some hunter's game, on the cold, iron floor, an end _would_ come. I _would_ escape from this.

But the question of whether I'd escape on my own two feet or on Charon's ferryboat still remained unanswered.

Some time had passed since I woke up from that haunting darkness and hardly any had passed (perceivably, anyway) since the realization that I'd woken up on some kind of battle vessel hit me. A magical war vessel, of course, though. You know, seeing as the thin sliver of glass (no more than six inches high) that spanned the room up by the ceiling had allowed for a near front row seat to all the action that this vessel's hull received as well as the back end of at least one other ship. Zooming, multicolored streaks zipped past the window and though many would veer away at about a foot or so from the hulls, deflected, quite a few did come crashing, resoundingly, through the shields and then, even more sonorously, would slam against the hulking structures. The damage reaped by the very powerful spells that managed to rip through densely powerful shields could hold its own against the likes of what I'd seen happen the summer the Ministry fell. And I don't just mean the chunks of the vessel that I could see sloughing off in charred pieces; I also mean the people. _Actual_ people, apparently, despite the size of these things and the sheer amount of firepower that made it seem impossible, still manned the artillery. Actual people still took hits. Well, from what I could see, anyway. I honestly had no idea how the hell what I looked at worked but suffice it to say that, with the bodies that I would see speeding and flailing past the window, I had a vague idea. And it reminded me of the old pirate tales Dad used to tell me.

Bloody sea scoundrels hovering over the masts and cannons on both ships in a churning sea, both trying to overtake the other. I would have laughed if I didn't think the action would make me cough up a lung.

Slowly, deliberately, I forced myself to keep breathing. You see, the action – so simple and somewhat taken for granted, I believe – tends to adopt a rather difficult nature when one has gashes running up and down his or her back. Deep gashes. Deep enough to have punctured a lung and possibly even have, quite literally, ripped apart a kidney. But how would I know? I can't see inside myself and much less in this mangled condition. I just knew that, judging by what I could see of my legs – excuse me, _leg_ that jutted out at a cruel angle, well, I didn't really need to see the rest of me to know that breathing remained the only thing I could do for myself. I mean, I could delude myself into thinking that perhaps if I concentrated hard enough, I could pull something like I had the night I escaped Hogwarts with Alexius all those years ago. (I already kind of had, hadn't I?) But, as I focused on my breathing and as the great flashes of blue and yellow and deeply purple and so much green sped past my window, I tended to lose focus on that idea and, with that, hope. I could only focus on the two things: inhale…exhale. And then I'd have to start all over again, focusing, because with each breath I took, I seemed to further rip something apart inside myself and that would send reams and reams of excruciating pain shooting up and down my thorax, forcing me to misuse the breath I'd taken in a bloody whimper or a howl of pain.

Rather stupid, really, but all the same unavoidable for all the effort I gave just to stay awake and breathing. It cost too much and I couldn't afford to punish myself any more than by forcing myself to breathe.

For the first time in a very, very long time, I prayed.

* * *

**_Tom_**

"Mamá…."

Dying plebes often call for their mothers or their fathers in their last moments. They cry with an unbridled kind of incapacity, one last time, for the comfort of home – of a parent, in the hopes that, perhaps because we could use magic, one of us – a Commander, a General, someone…anyone – could make it happen. They cried for their parents but more for us to listen to them, to please, _please_ bring them home to die. To please not let them die there…not like that. But war, no matter the battlefield or the constituents – magical or Muggle, remains just that: war; a bloodbath and a hollowed out piece of reality that encases the coldest of the cold, the cruelest of the cruel and the worst of the worst circumstances imaginable. Dying plebes often call for their mothers or their fathers in their last moments. But most dying plebes do not have their calls answered. Most dying plebes die, spattered in their own blood and the blood of their dead or dying comrades, watching others just like them face off with Death as well.

But Electra Villanueva was no plebe, much less was she dying. And yet, as she slept and, every now and again, called for her mother – su mamá*** – I got the same odd sensation as I did the first time I lived through WWII and many children had lain as she did now, doing the same thing. I couldn't remember it feeling so deeply ingrained the first time around – I hadn't really expected many of the smaller ones to survive the blasts that had tossed them about and in so doing took their arms and legs. But, all the same, whether then when I coldly observed each and every child as a matron or priest rushed him or her by on stretchers – sometimes two or three to one stretcher at the orphanage – or whether now as I mutely observed the pointy-faced young woman as she slowly recovered from her injuries, that vacant helplessness that comes with this kind of scene still had the same viciously tight grip.

And don't get sentimental on me, Muggle. Remember the circumstances: I kill and watch people die for a living, basically; it's not a helplessness of my inability to have done something to change things for anyone in particular. No. It consists more of a…of an instinct. You kill people. You watch people die. Sure, the first time gets to you a bit and the second perhaps a little less. But that disappears after a while with practice and with desensitizing. What remains has a more cruel quality to it than just guilt or compassion for a dying plebe who can't stop crying for Mummy. What remains only remains because without it I couldn't do my job: survival. And exactly that – survival – stays behind. It forces you to watch and accept, to observe and ponder (obviously, helplessly in vain) how you will ever look or behave when your turn comes to writhe in pain on the floor, dying. If you will ever go beyond that.

Again, Muggle, don't twist things about. I don't tend to plague myself with silly thoughts and vague conclusions to something that I so obviously have to either accept or change immediately (the choice is still there). I don't tend to weigh myself down with half-baked panic or paranoia in light of the people I keep from setting foot on my territory. I truly don't have time to think of what I'll look like when I die. But that doesn't mean that it can't happen to me. It doesn't mean that I don't know that I still possess that very weak, very uniquely _mortal_ flaw and that I don't wonder, from time to time, how things would have turned out had I not taken so much of an interest in the rogue Spaniard. And even less right now, as…as Electra Villanueva lays there, so blatantly _flawed_, could I avoid these thoughts: what if I'd just left her there in Hogsmeade that day?

I rose from the clumsy wooden chair that Healer Villanueva had moved me to at some point between my trying to not fall ill again and my decision making, turning left toward the only door in the room and digging into the right-hand pocket of my fatigues.

"Riddle?" the elder questioned me cautiously, most likely trying to avoid throwing me back into instability himself.

I didn't answer him, but merely kept walking and exited the room, shutting the door behind me and locking it with a powerful sealing curse. I'd only ever read about the process and memorized how it worked and what I had to do. But I'd never done it before. Still, looking down at the clumsily wrought ring resting in the palm of my hand, I knew the sealing curse and perhaps even an Anti-Apparition charm as well would remain necessary until I finished. Pain and Cheating grew up together and live as lovers in this realm. So, of course, when it comes to cheating something so powerful and so intricately woven into the very fabric of not only Time but this world _itself_…I knew to prepare for the kind of pain and suffering I've never known in my life and wouldn't wish to know in other circumstances. I knew I had to lock that God damn door good and tight for as long as I occupied the tiny vestibule-like corridor between the Healer's 'office' and the rest of the storage warehouse in the very bowels of NYC. I couldn't let him interrupt me.

I began. No one had ever bothered to translate the spell from its original ancient Greek, but even so it flowed easily enough as I spoke it. Most people who've 'studied' Horcruxes tend to believe that the spell to create something so foul would require an incredible amount of expertise with both spellwork and wandwork. I cannot exhaust emphasis on how incredibly stupid these people have boded. To this day they refuse to understand the simplicity of it: the spell isn't any more difficult than bottling a memory; it's the process of tearing one's soul apart that makes the whole ordeal something daunting. Then again, it doesn't really surprise me that people like that – people who 'study' things like this – can't wrap their heads around an idea like this. To them, the whole thing portrays a stark contrast between black and white facts: murder is murder and therefore horcruxes, overall, are difficult to craft. My view, however, differs: murder is murder and horcruxes are horcruxes; one is an optional byproduct of the other and, therefore, does not share a level of difficulty with it. Only a hypocrite would find a bit of wand waving challenging or vile because it bridges the gap between what he or she did and what he or she has yet to do, but I won't get into that stigma. I don't have the time.

Somewhere between severing the last connecting ligaments and tendons (or what are actually the counterparts to these with respect to the human Soul) and creating a sturdy pathway for the piece to travel from me and into the Gaunt ring, I realized how horrible of a mistake I'd just made. Abruptly, the flow of my magic cut and, had I had any control over it by the time I realized what had happened, it would have stopped and dissipated from the air around me. Instead, as the magic cut (a result of the spell going horribly wrong due to an error on my part, or so I later learned), my residual magic – with no owner to guide it and without a path to seek – burst and dispersed itself, gaining both strength and volume, around the tiny enclosed space. The last thing I felt as a shower of blindingly white and crimson light rushed toward me in an odd plume-like explosion (not unlike the mushroom cloud, except with light and the force of magic), the burning sensation on the inside of my left wrist signifying the end of my duties here in 2001 New York City.

* * *

**_Alexius_**

The whole thing took mere moments.

I landed, quite undisturbed and yet disturbed beyond any kind of belief you could have at a moment like this one, on the Fallen Wolf's Apparition point below deck. Too easy. Right off the bat, I knew to expect something bigger than what I could possibly handle alone to come at me and fast. But all the same I kept moving forward. _Pop_ping in and out of random lower level chambers, searching for the kind of room these animals would keep a POW in; I made sure to never stay in one point for longer than three seconds. Too wary of the empty corridors and rooms that mirrored those aboard our ship, I tried calculating how fast it would take to find Thalia on this ship and to Apparate back onto mine if I somehow got myself into a chase. The vastness of the probability of something other than finding her and getting her safely back happening unnerved me to say the least and for a split second I almost thought to call in for back up. (Maybe, I should've listened to Gentry?) Then, as I _crack_ed out of one room just to _pop_ into yet another dank, smelly and under protected room, all thought of calling in more people to face the very same dangers that I faced now – the same that poor Spain had already gone up against – flew out of the narrow strip of glass above.

"Spain!" I hissed and threw myself to my knees next to her, landing right in a puddle of her still sickeningly warm blood. Pale and papery as she looked, my hand shook as I forced it to move forward and grab a shoulder to shake her.

Four things happened in such quick succession that I hardly had time to even process the first – and possibly most important – thing. Though her eyes had remained closed throughout the process of me kneeling beside her and calling her name, as soon as I shook her, they snapped open and she released one of the most agonized shrieks of pain I'd ever heard in my life. Then, with the inertia of my shake still moving her, she rolled onto her back (eliciting more shrieks) and her left leg finished falling off. Also, five octaves above the sound of her screams, alarms sounded and someone roared over the master station of the ship: "INTRUDER! ENEMY HANDS ON BOARD AND ATTEMPTING TO FLEE WITH THE PRISONER! CASTING ANTI-APPARITION CHARMS NOW!" Then, as if on cue with her screams and the alarms, an enormous force rocked the hull of this ship and blasted a chunk (about the size of a small ATV) of the wall below the narrow pane of glass into something resembling rice mixed with small pebbles. And lastly, just as the magic of Anti-Apparition fell heavily upon the room, the suction force created by the pressure of the room exiting through the hole in its side gave me just enough time to grab onto Thalia by hooking an arm under and around her torso (even more agonized shrieks) and then to grab her fallen leg by the bloody ankle before it sucked us both out of the ship.

* * *

"Sixty-five thousand feet," Gentry muttered for what felt like the hundredth time within the hour. "Sixty – mid-air Disapparition – you could have bloody well _died_ Alexius. I mean, for the love of – ugh!" He seemed to fight the urge to throw his hands up in frustration for a few seconds but then, as he inhaled deeply and then shook his head, he calmly finished: "At least you got her. She'll be a few days in ICU – those bites and gashes and that leg were a bit much – but she'll be fine. Her magic protects her more than I think she even realizes."

My brows furrowed. "What makes you say that?" I'd already witnessed Thalia learning how her magic can heal her. Why should she question it now?

He shrugged and shook his head, invisible hooks pulling his brows and the corners of his mouth into a deeply thoughtful frown. "I don't know. It's just…she keeps calling…she keeps asking for help. I mean, maybe it's only natural – she is calling for Riddle – but I don't know. She keeps asking him to 'fix it'."

My own frown deepened. "Could it be she means something else? They _are_ both Travelers. Any number of things could have gone wrong over the years that we don't know about and even more so now that it's been give or take an hour since I called him back from 2001 and he hasn't even answered…. Maybe she feels something."

With another solemn shrug, Gentry stalked out of my quarters and I stayed there, seated on the edge of my bed, wondering….

"Today's the day, isn't it, sir?" Parkinson asked me a bit later over Riddle's mangled form at the Apparition point, something beyond worry or fear in her voice. I looked to my right at her, brows knitted together in a blend of anger, disappointment, frustration and sadness, and she added, unnecessarily, "The day the prophecy spoke of: the day the two pillars fall."

* * *

Eres bruja - you're a witch

arepas - South American corn cakes. In this usage, Colombian, specifically, which varies in the same way, but these are made with sweet corn an cheese.

su mamá - her mother (not to be confused with the informal address)


	3. Full Circle

**A/N:** Dudes, I'm exhausted. And, I know, man, I know. I owe you guys this one from - ufff - a while now. And those of you who've spoken to me, gosh you guys know I've tried, I really have, to get this up for a few weeks now. But, as I always say, (and more so recently as new shit has been cropping up in my life that kind of decides for me to make it all a living hell), writer's block sucks. So, guys, I'm really sorry for how late this is and for any and ALL the spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors. I'm telling you now, there are more than a few because most of this chapter was written in a rush so as to keep my ideas from escaping me and to keep myself from having a mood swing that would force me to change it all. I did that about four times with this chapter. I wanted to throw my laptop out of a window. Seriously. But, here it is, FINALLY! And again, guys, I really apologize for how late it is and the overall quality. But I really hope you guys enjoy it and let me know what you think if ya want. For those of you who reviewed last time whether by PM (because apparently you can't review a chapter more than once o.O) or by normal review if you were allowed, THANK YOU! You're awesome. Seriously, you are. And like I always say, I don't write for the reviews at all. I write because I love the characters and the story. But, definitely, those of you who vocalize yourselves or just read silently and add and fav or follow, you guys make it worth the struggle it is to write sometimes. Because, like JKR said once, no story lives unless someone wants to hear it, so I thank you all. You're all wonderful people who deserve medals of honor for having survived TWT and now this one.

Enjoy, y'all!

* * *

_**Dynamis Tempus**_

By: NY GE Pyromaniac

**Chapter Two: _ Full Circle_**

* * *

_"If our destiny stems from our name, then I weep for the flower named Wilt." ― Jarod Kintz, _It Occurred to Me

* * *

**_New York City, 2001_**

Ray Deluca (Ray for most) never saw it coming. Well, what middle-aged, cold hearted (not quite) brute of a man would? Thalia Espinoza – his little Thali – had such a way with most people around her that, quite honestly, it surprised him that she hadn't fallen into something like this much, much sooner. Yes, Rex almost – so very _almost_ – had pulled her into it but…no. To this day, down to the very second he counted along with his thundering heart beats, he refused to believe any of that mess had actually happened. Not anymore. Thalia had recovered. She'd moved on and left that shit-bag behind. No need to resurrect that shit. None at all.

And he'd almost convinced himself of such, standing there in a pool of someone's blood and so much debris. But not quite. Not quite, because he knew, in his heart of almost nonexistent paternal hearts that Thalia Espinoza had this coming to her even if he never saw it.

"Thali…" he whispered, pained and, for all intents and purposes, crushed. Bending to pick up a medallion on a length of ball chain that, to him at least, felt incongruous to the scene around him, he swallowed a sigh or something similar – buried it deep within him. "…you fucking dumbass." Grunting slightly as he straightened up (he swore this was easier to do just five years ago), Ray Deluca – Ray for most – gripped the familiar medallion with its Latin inscription and decided. He needed to dig into his own past – if only this once – to bring back what who knows who had taken from him.

* * *

**_Alexius_**

"This was _your_ idea, Alexius!" roared Paz, slamming his fist down on the table and pointing an accusing finger at me while his eyes blazed in the rage he secreted from them. "_You_ had better bloody well fix this and fix it _now_ because she's not – staying – here!" And with that he stood from the table and walked swiftly out of the room. I'd barely had a chance to open my mouth in protest to this when the door to the Council room slid closed again.

"He'll come around, Commander," Waters said and Gentry nodded in agreement, eyeing the door with a level of disdain.

I shook my head. sighing. "He won't. But this isn't of his incumbency. We started Blue Beach for a reason and whether he likes it or not and despite all of the setbacks we've had, we have to move forward. In the end, to pacify him, if we have to simply omit certain pieces of the whole and not tell him our reasons, then so be it. But of the fact that we're continuing with the mission and cleaning up our messes as we go: we're doing it." They both nodded and I took up the next point. "Riddle's awake and in Recovery. He'll need a week or so of rest and then we send him back out."

"Sir –" Waters tried to cut in, the strong opposition and slight panic heavily weighing down her tone so that she sounded almost choked.

But I held my hand up and shook my head again, saying, "Waters, I'm sorry, but there's no other choice. If the Coalition thinks, even for a split second, that they've turned this around on us and can actually move another step forward without decimating themselves, they'll do it. I need Riddle and Espinoza on this one _together_." She grimaced and I bit back the same barrage of choice words I'd had in store for her for the last few months, finishing off with only a, "Your Commander will be perfectly fine."

She gave a curt nod and then lowered her gaze to scowl darkly at the table and Gentry, eyes darting nervously between us, took up the talk. "Sir, Espinoza will need training. She's awake and asking questions as we speak. Shall I prepare for her to be given a crash course?"

I nodded, glancing at the door. "Yes. Arrange for Paz to have his Sergeant man the helm of his ship while he trains her."

He nodded, glancing again between Waters and me. "And if he asks why we're training her if he supposes that we're sending her back home?"

"Tell him it's a precaution. Something to ensure that this doesn't happen again because we'll always have to keep an eye on her and it would be better if she could handle herself a bit better."

"Sir," he affirmed and stepped toward the door. He'd gotten the thing open and hovered there at the threshold a moment, looking back at us, a defiant glint to his eyes, before getting Waters' attention by rapping the table lightly. Waters looked up from her now tightly woven fingers and gave him an annoyed but expectant look as if waiting to hear his reasons (to be decided by her if they were good enough or not) for disrupting her brooding. "Prophecies are prophecies, Waters." He held his hand up to silence her as she sucked her teeth and continued. "And you might be here because of the result of some stupidity on the part of both Miss Espinoza and of Commander Riddle. But remember," he told her, stepping back in and somehow causing that glint in his eyes to full on shine, "Alexius is still here. And if your Commander's near death rants are to be understood correctly, there's more to be expected. So," he went on, smirking now, "chin up, soldier. Whining will not be tolerated." With that, he left and the door slid closed on Waters and I, sitting there in a stunned but amused (at least on my part) silence.

I made a mental note to myself to give Gentry the next couple of weeks off.

* * *

**_Tom_**

"You almost killed yourself," Paz told me when he came back into the room. He'd stepped out a few minutes to let me dress in the clothes he'd brought with him when he first came in here and now he stood there, eyeing me warily as if I may very well just die on him right now. "Alexius thinks you were trying to make a Horcrux," he said once I'd situated myself but it came out as a question and I scoffed in response as he crossed his arms over his chest. He reminded me a bit of a TV wrestler but not quite: big but lithe; not bulky. He could put force into a punch but not much weighed him down so he could move quickly too.

"Is that what went wrong, then?" I asked him as I bent to pull on my boots, biting back a wince as a sharp and deep pain shot from my abdomen straight up into the back of my shoulders.

He sighed, bored. "I don't know. I suppose. He said something about certain things not counting in times of war and much less when it comes to something or other."

"Something or other?"

"Mhm," he made, nodding. "I don't know exactly what. I was a bit busy trying to get him to focus on sending Thali back home."

For a moment, as I tied the combat boots securely around my ankles, I paused, thinking. _Well, yes, of course she'd be here, wouldn't she?_ Continuing on tying my laces, I murmured my acknowledgement and he went on.

"You know, I might not be too clear on what the hell happened and I've been made pretty aware that this is a kind of second chance for me, but sometimes Alexius is a straight up idiot."

I nodded as I straightened up and met his annoyed gaze. "I know. But you signed up for this, Paz, and," I inhaled deeply, choosing my words carefully because, no matter what second chances Alexius had handed out or how much of a difference exists between this Jorge Paz and the last one I saw, Paz could still lose it very easily. Even more so when it comes to his little sister. And we don't need that. "…as much as you want to take care of her, Thalia's a grown woman." He glared at me, taking a step closer, but I continued on anyway. "She can choose what she does and doesn't want to do. She made that very clear all those years ago and now she has to own up to the consequences."

"Are you insinuating –?"

"I am. And yes, I share the blame too because I went along with her when I should have, at the very least, tried to keep myself back. But what's done is done and there's no turning back, only making things right."

"That's what the bloody hell you're here for isn't it?" he sneered and started pacing like a caged animal. He knew, as well as I, that this conversation stood as the only rail between what happened then and what will happen next. All the same, he seemed to need it to play out anyway, seemed to need to hear what he wanted to hear in order to keep himself at bay. After all, he too had more to lose than just Thalia, I suppose. This conversation stood as the only rail between him now and him ripping Alexius' throat out with his bare hands, completely nulling the whole purpose of even the seven circuits Thalia pushed herself through.

So, I nodded and said, "Precisely. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to have to talk to Alexius about bringing Thalia home. There's enough temporal energy surging from the Vortex right now through these walls to blow us and London into the next galaxy and it'll get worse."

Nodding, he stepped aside and said, "Right. Go ahead. I'll see you later. Don't forget to go release some of that," he jerked his chin at me knowingly, "as soon as you can before you get pulled back into it."

Eyeing him warily as I made for the door, I nodded. How he even knew about the Demolecularization stood beyond any realm of comprehension I knew then and I wanted to ask him about it, but I decided not to. Not only did I not have the time (the situation with Thalia was urgent), but I stood a mere level away from snatching his sister from him and carrying her off to the most dangerous point of her life – lives – where the outlook of her staying alive stood very slim (although that's only outcome we really want for this – go figure). I could spare him the third degree interrogation this time, leaving him just enough quiet time to calm down and process what has really happened these last seven decades and what should happen now.

"You would think after so many people dead, _someone_ would have counted," I mused over an old blueprint that sat somewhat crumpled on the far side of Alexius' desk in his quarters.

"Mm," he made distractedly as he studied a map of New York City, every now and then marking a location or a difference I'd told him of and measuring distances. "Well, war is war, Riddle. As angry as you get, if the cause is just…" he began sagely and then looked up from the map at me, smirking. I gave him a bored look. "Right, well, I don't even need to say it. Anyway, let's get back to the main topic." He scoffed disbelievingly and shook his head as he asked, "What the hell had you thinking – with that much certainty, mind – that you were going to die? What about that girl, Electra, scared you so bad?"

"She didn't _scare_ me, Alexius," I corrected and he rolled his eyes as I straightened out the seat I sat in, which I'd taken to balancing on two legs. "The prospect of who she was in conjunction with where she came from and what that means when you apply to it what the hell happened last night is what set me off." He didn't say anything, merely eyed me through glazed eyes that carried his years of experience in them despite his appearance, and nodded for me to go on. I sighed and explained, "If the Coalition just knew what the hell they were doing last night, Grindelwald and everyone in the Militia would be either dead or conquered by now."

"You really think so?" he asked, once again distracted by the map.

I stood, slamming the chair back down onto its four legs once more. "Alexius," I said as calmly as I could manage with the annoyance pumping through me, and leaned over the desk, pointing down at the piece of land marked 'Brooklyn' on the map. "They knew where _Thalia_ was." He scoffed and rolled his eyes again as he looked up at me, ready to respond to that. I cut him off. "That took us four years to figure out and that was with the other one helping us. The Coalition switched up strategies all of, what, _three_ maybe _four_ months ago and found her like that?" I snapped my fingers on my right hand, continuing to jab at the map with my left. "We were this close to losing everything, Alexius, for that girl and I saw only one way out of it. Unfortunately, it didn't work because, apparently, I'm not the blood thirsty murderer I figured myself to be." I scoffed and so did he, both of us straightening up. "If they had just known who they had right in their hands when they took Thalia…Alexius, seventy years of war would have gone straight down the tube."

He nodded and scooped up the map, furling it up. "I appreciate the sacrifice you would have made," he began in that tone he uses with the Plebes and their families when a tragedy has occurred and I had to clench every muscle I could without ripping something to keep myself from hitting him.

Sucking my teeth and sneering impatiently, I spat, "Don't give me the Purple Heart speech, Alexius, please. Just get Thalia away from here. We need head them off and finish this now before they catch wind of what's going on." He rolled his eyes, bored, again so I added, snidely and intending to shank him where I knew it hurt him most, "Or is that what you want?" He stifled a sneer and for a few seconds, with the stony, disdainful gaze he let settle upon me, I honestly thought he'd take to dueling me again for that and I prepared for it. With my hand curved just so that with a flick of my wrist I'd not only have my wand in my hand but also have fired my first spell, I stood there and waited for him to continue.

"Fine," he finally pushed through his gritted teeth. "But give yourself a week. You need to rest and burn off that excess Time." I scoffed and he continued. "Paz will be training her in combat and you'll strengthen her mind."

"What?" That caught even me by surprise, how loudly I blurted that out, but all the same, with his eyes widening somewhat in shock at my tone, he seemed to think it rather funny.

He smiled. "You heard me. Legilimency and Occlumency. Twice a day, every day until you leave and if you have a chance when you get to your destination, you continue until you feel she can fair on her own."

"What purpose does it serve her? She never thinks before she acts anyway." Okay, so it came out a bit sullen and sulky. But would _you_ want to be the one teaching her to strengthen her mind as stubborn as she is? No. I didn't think so.

He full on laughed this time. "No, she doesn't. But that's the purpose of it. Force her to think. Make it so that, bit by bit at least, she'll see it our way."

"That's manipulation."

"That's _you_, mate," he laughed and, tightening the roll on his map, made for the door. Turning back to me in my bristling silence, he asked, "Are you coming?"

"Where?"

"Thalia's awake and probably tearing somebody a new one."

* * *

**_Thalia_**

When I woke up, I had hoped that what I remembered happening mere hours before had consisted of nothing more than a really, really bad trip on some coke laced with some bad crystal or something. But now, as I sat there in my hospital gown amid the rumpled and warm sheets, still feeling the phantom aches of what my body had endured (and only vaguely wondering if I'd lost my mind), I knew that what had happened not only crossed that boundary between hallucination and reality, it marked the start of something enormous. Something possibly too big for me.

"Thalia," said Jorge in a strained and pained tone. It hurt me to hear his voice like this but the look on his face…that devastated patina coating his eyes made it unbearable to even witness.

Not even detangling myself from the sheets, much less standing up, I pushed off of the bed and flung myself forward and into him, expecting him full well to catch me. He didn't disappoint.

"Thalia," he repeated into my shoulder this time and the cracked, raspy quality of his tearful voice shattered me just in time for the wetness that touched the side of my neck then to wash me away.

I choked a sob into the bomber jacket he had on and he crushed me harder to him, releasing painful but merely breathed sobs as well. "Maldita sea la hora, Jorge," I choked out after a few strangled moments in which I could neither breathe nor think properly and he sniffed, only half releasing me and wiping at his face with the free hand.

He nodded and then pulled me in for a kiss on the forehead this time before releasing me completely. "Damned be the hour, indeed, Thali. Damned be so many things."

I gazed at him, sniffling and biting the inside of my cheek to keep my chin from trembling too much, and didn't even bother to wipe my eyes. "You were dead," I croaked and he nodded, hardening his chin. "I…I…"

"Yeah." He nodded again, the hardness leaving his face for just a split second and giving way to something resembling sheepishness. "I've been told."

"What happened? How…?"

He shrugged, sincerely flummoxed, it seemed. "But I'm not the only one," he began, shaking his head and his eyes going a bit wide like a warning. It gave him a deranged quality that drew me in instead of scaring me. Almost like when, as kids, we stood up chismeando* about whatever the hell came up over Friday night pizzas and Cokes with our aunt Melinda and, when he got an early night, Dad. But he stopped suddenly, the hardness now taking over not only his face but his eyes as well turning them into crystalized honey with streaks of blue sugar through them, and turned on the bed just as something like air escaping a tire sounded and the door opened, allowing in two more people that I thought I'd seen the last of. (Well, one of them only recently, I suppose.) "Commanders," he greeted them with a curt nod to each, standing.

And I fell right back into that state of shock I'd woken up in. "Commanders?" I asked with both surprise and confusion slipping and sliding excitedly along my tone, coating it in a thick layer of something akin to panic. It marked the first time I really asked myself what the hell had happened. I reflexively tugged at my sheets and adjusted myself on the bed, making sure the damn gown covered me properly before fixing the three of them – Alexius, Riddle and my brother – with an expectant look.

"It's nice to know you're alive, Espinoza," Riddle stated passively, staring blankly at me.

It didn't faze me. He had just as much to answer for as I did. "Likewise. I didn't think you'd make it out of that alley."

For a second the blankness in his black eyes flickered, revealing for the tiniest fraction of a second the question he wanted to blurt out and I smirked. Quickly, he stifled the question and reinforced the blankness, nodding and curling his mouth ever so slightly in recognition. "I'm fine, as you can see."

I nodded, still somewhat smirking, and then passed my gaze from him to Alexius, who'd torn his from Jorge and warmed it up a bit as it fell on me. "You look worse than I feel," I told him and he laughed softly.

"Spoils of war," he said dryly, not even attempting to lighten the load that that would carry. He sat on the edge of my bed as my smirk faltered into a grimace and took my hand in his. "How have you been? Aside from today, I mean."

A somewhat indifferent shrug in response didn't seem to suffice because he gave me an unconvinced look with a tilt of the head and I sighed. "I've been worse."

He nodded silently and brought my hand to his lips to plant a soft kiss there. "There will come a day when the best of your todays will be the worst of your tomorrows, Spain. Don't fizzle out so quickly." He smiled and laid my hand back on my sheets with a performance as if putting down a Faberge egg before standing again and turning to Jorge. "I assume Gentry has spoken with you."

Jorge nodded and tossed me a sideways glance before adding, "She can start tomorrow, but there's only so much I can do in a week."

Nodding, Alexius stepped toward him to lay a hand on his shoulder and shake him gently, reassuringly. "Commander, if there is anyone more fit to train this particular person, he or she has yet to be born. Trust me when I say, I know what I'm doing assigning her to you."

Jorge scoffed and shoved Alexius' hand off him a bit roughly but good-naturedly. "You belong in a telenovela." Alexius laughed and Jorge continued. "I'm going to get my Sergeant on the helm and arrange for the coming week. Defensive Number Ten, correct?"

"Correct," Alexius answered and Jorge left, tossing Riddle a strange look as he did.

Suppressing the urge to ask about it (not much has changed, I suppose), I turned expectantly to Alexius who'd turned back to me and smiled warmly. "What's up?" I asked him.

He flashed a huge grin and asked, "Ever had any hand to hand training, Spain?"

* * *

"You're shitting me," I told Alexius flatly, looking from him to Riddle, who'd stayed silent throughout his explanation, and expecting one of them to burst out laughing.

"Definitely not. And trust me, no one wishes more than me that it didn't have to be this way, but you two fuck-ups left me no choice." He pointed both of his indexes at each of us in turn, emphasizing who he'd meant by that, and fixed us with a miffed leer.

I sucked my teeth and Riddle inhaled deeply, rolling his eyes. "Fine," I coaxed, "fine, but, seriously, couldn't I have had a say? I mean, even in the name of the operation? Fucking Blue Beach of all things."

"Nope. And Blue Beach is cool," he said defensively, frowning at me. "Very few people know that your Time Turner is filled with blue sand."

"And the operation itself?" I pushed, trying to get to the grain of the issue. "Why were you guys keeping tabs on me? Couldn't you just have said something if it was going to end up this way anyway?"

A grimace blighted his reckless face and he sighed. "Believe it or not, Spain, I actually wanted to spare you the trouble and headache just a bit longer. As much as I could. I'm not completely hopeless in terms of understanding you. I know why you did what you did – I know why Riddle followed your ass there." He glanced at Riddle whose eyes had darkened save for a tiny glint in his left eye that shone slightly crimson. "It's not that hard to dissect. But even Riddle turned around and worked toward the right end. Now it's your turn."

"Mm," I made and he nodded along with me. "So, let me get this straight just for the purpose of not throwing my shoes at people." Riddle scoffed and Alexius fixed me with another somewhat annoyed but bored look before nodding me on. "We left. I landed my ass in the 90s and Riddle floated around in Time for a bit before landing here with you guys in oh-eight – all four years ago?"

"Yup."

"And before any of that happened –"

He huffed impatiently, cutting me off, "– not _before_. What part of 'simultaneous' is so hard to understand? You crash into the 90s, Riddle floats a bit and _then_ lands here. While you're crashing and he's floating, my ass went back to the forties and fixed the mess. Sort of."

"Still confused."

"Which is why I fear for all Traveler-kind, but we'll cover Time again at a later point."

"I just need to understand what the hell happened. How the hell did you span from 1943 all the way to at least 1997 in the same amount of time it took for me and him to get where we did?"

He sighed in frustration but spoke calmly, as if explaining something very simple to a toddler. "When you're Traveling, Time isn't measured. You just go thought it. It's the Space between Times that we move through to get where we're headed. So, while you barely even breathed a breath in 1997 New York, I'd already gotten down to the core of what's at risk now and Riddle was probably just veering off toward 2008 or had already landed and was being briefed. I can't say precisely; but that's the point. We Travel _between_ and there, there are no measurements. It's all simultaneous yet separate."

"Okay. So, from 1943?"

"I went back. Got myself fixed up because that animal they let stay a Traveler ripped a chunk out of my leg. Thankfully he wasn't transformed so, virtually nothing happened except a nasty scar. After that, I went to find Grindelwald."

"And he accepted? Just like that?"

He nodded. "All I had to do was tell him about us and Chronos and how Dumbledore fits into it and then he was the one to set most of us into action."

"I don't get that. Why would he even care? He's not a Traveler. No one has shared with him, right?"

"No. But it's not the Traveling that hooked him," he answered matter-of-factly. "It was what Dumbledore was doing: spreading lies that manipulated wizard-kind; hunting down at least three very powerful people, by the looks of it; and siding with someone other than him on something so large scale." He'd answered almost nothing, and my raised eyebrow told him so. "Before Grindelwald went on his crusade and called Dumbledore out, things were very much the opposite between those two."

"They were friends, right?" I asked, nodding and remembering the original line. "I read something to that effect in the _Prophet_ back – back in the original line."

He spared me a small smile and nodded. "Right, but…well, would you go _this_ ballistic," he gestured around him at the room in general – a small recovery room in the Infirmary level of a massive war ship engaged in a sort of standoff with the ships that represented Dumbledore's side, "for just a friend?"

"Well, no. But they were best…" I trailed off at him shaking his head and smirking knowingly. "What?"

"Think, Thalia. Who would be worth so much trouble in the grand scheme of things when you couldn't even be an active part of it past commanding an army?"

"Would you just spit it out?" I snapped at him.

He smirked even more. "They were _lovers_, Spain. You should have read that Rita Skeeter book a bit more in depth."

"It wasn't out yet, I believe, by the time I got sucked into the continuum. Anyway, okay, so he's on our side because Dumbledore dumped him or something?"

He did that 'sort of' head bob thing and shrugged. "He has his reasons. A lot to do with him going Dark side early on and how Dumbledore reacted. But, that's not what matters. What matters is what we've been up to."

"Setting things right. Get the fixed point we messed with nailed back down."

"Had a ruddy good job of it, too, mind," he said angrily. "You two are lucky that things didn't go as haywire as they could have."

"_As_ haywire?" I demanded of him incredulously. "Alexius, I'm in bloody 2012, recovering from stupid werewolf bites culminating from a scrapped operation called bleeding Blue Beach. What the hell else could have happened?"

"You could have been ridden a pterodactyl up here instead."

"What?"

"Forget it. The point is: I've spent this time pushing forward and getting things back into place."

"Into place for what?"

"I've no idea," he sighed and sat back down on the bed. He'd stood a while ago, while he explained the majority of this, to pace a little. "See, last time, apparently your role," he pointed to the two of us again, "was, to take over the Wizarding world after you brought him" he jerked his thumb at Riddle, "back to your era. It was to dethrone Chronos, basically."

"But I did that."

"Yes. But no."

"What?"

Riddle sucked his teeth and sighed. Alexius smirked. "Impatient much?"

"We could've started her on at least a bit of Legilimency by now. I don't see the purpose of all of this. All she really needs is to hear the bloody prophecy and it'll be done with. No questions asked."

"Yes, well, that's another bit you two have in common, isn't it?" Riddle narrowed his eyes at him and his lip curled in a sneer. Alexius merely smirked and continued to goad him. "Rash and bold. Stupid and young. Or stupid and in love, whichever you prefer."

"D'you mind?" I cut in hastily and avoided Riddle's eyes, feeling my face tingle with the oncoming heat. "What prophecy? And what do you mean by yes but no? He's dead."

"Mm," he uttered uncertainly, tilting his head side to side and grimacing. "We can't be sure."

"_What?_"

"We. Can't. Be. Sure."

"I'm going to smack you, Black! What the hell? You couldn't say anything before?"

"Well, since we can't prove that he's alive and about either, I saw it fit not to panic your maniac arse."

"Riddle, give me your boots."

Riddle scoffed and said, "Relax. Just listen to what he has to say."

"You could jump in at any time, you know," Alexius informed him.

"It's okay. You're doing very well. She hasn't died of shock yet."

Alexius mockingly mimicked the chuckle Riddle gave and turned back to me. "His body was gone when I went back to the Hall of Time after a few days of avoiding it. See, his disciples had taken to patrolling it for a few days after you two cut out and it wasn't safe, but I needed to destroy Chronos' body."

"Why?"

"Some things are still too big for you to understand, love. Just let it suffice that I had to destroy it, but it wasn't there. Now, these disciples – early Coalition Travelers – _they_ might have taken it for the very same reasons I wanted to. But, then again, they're not fools. Travelers, which is what Chronos ultimately demoted back into when his essence – the essence of the Hall of Time, Time itself – passed from him and into you, always have a backup."

"You're telling me he could come back from the dead? That Travelers can come back from the dead?" I asked, a nasty skepticism coating my tone thickly and dripping off of me. "Not even this one in his most powerful days," I pointed at Riddle, who jerked his head up from the causally tilted position he'd held it in and snapped his gaze up to meet mine, "could have done that. Sure, there were idiots who thought he could. But no. Never. Not possible."

"Possible. And likely, dear Spain. Very likely."

"How?"

"Too big."

"Try me."

"Not yet."

"Damn it, Black!"

"Look, love, if you're going to call me Black then at least let it be Sirius this time, yeah? I have to give the appearance of having died as Lucas and whatnot."

"What?"

"Yes. Just like in the other versions of the line."

"Were you always Sirius?"

He smirked and ignored my question. "Anyway, This time around, the goal is obvious: put an end to this war. But as to how, well, to be honest it's not quite clear." Riddle scoffed and Alexius turned to glare at him. "Something to say?"

"No, but I'm sure that a certain Seer would love to have a few words with her."

"Soon enough."

"If you two are done, can I ask? How did this turn into a full blown war in the first place? Couldn't you have just gotten together a few more Travelers and hunted down the disciples? How did they get strong enough to form the – what did you call them – the Coalition?"

"Coalition of Ubiquitous Non-Traveler Sentries or Coalition for short, yes. And, yes, I could have. But I might not be alive right now if I had. Too quickly the lies Dumbledore made up about us had spread and although there were many, many Travelers who couldn't have been happier to see Chronos out of the running, it's still a crime among us to involve non-Travelers in our – ah – more dangerous affairs. It's maddening to see how many people really would've killed me on sight. No, first I had to do some damage control. But I only ever got around to a few of them. Maybe around thirty Travelers _at most_ and the rest either wouldn't listen because they felt it personally wrong to have let it get that far or Dumbledore already got them. Most of them only let me out of their homes out of respect for the millennia they've known me."

"So, basically, Dumbledore turned this shit inside out? He lied and – what – blew up Chronos' lies as well?"

Nodding, he answered, "Yeah. Except that now, these younger Travelers do know – and all too well – what they're capable of."

"But, there are only so many Travelers per generation. Target them, no?"

He scoffed this time and gave me an amusedly incredulous look. "Are you joking? After the way you _gave_ Riddle your Traveling abilities, do you _honestly_ think that no one has done the same and figured out how to share them properly without limiting themselves?"

"How?"

"Regenerative sands from the manmade Time Turners," he said waving the question aside. "It's effective and we use it, but we're looking for another, less volatile way."

"Volatile?"

He nodded thoughtfully. "It seems that as the sands of Time are duplicated more and more, generation after generation, something is diluted within them and is starts to hurt the Made Travelers."

"Made? Like I 'Made' Riddle a Traveler, you mean?"

"Precisely. It seems that the strength of the bond between the sands and the Vortex is weakened by dilution and that, in turn, rips a hole into the physiological protection that we are born with and they are just lent. It starts the process of temporal fragmentation within us."

My brows scrunched up in question and Riddle clarified: "Demolecularization – temporal fragmentation – is what happens when too much Time is allowed to pass through a Traveler."

Alexius nodded. "Normally, it wouldn't happen to anyone with the ability to do so – whether by manmade Time Turners or by ours – because there are limitations and protections in place. For manmade Time Turners, one can only Travel back a few hours at most, so there's no real risk of overexposure. For ours, however, the risk exists in terms of how far back or forward we can go, but, like I said, we're born with the proper physiological abilities to withstand that sort of exposure. Something very bad has to be happening to us for a rip to occur in that aspect of our natural magic."

"Okay, so, Made Travelers have this problem?"

"Yes, but only the ones who _share_ Traveler abilities."

"Basically all of them," cut in Riddle. "They dilute that borrowed protection by over-sharing and with the force of Time, well, what can you expect?"

I nodded, understanding and feeling almost sorry for those who fell ill with this fragmentation. I had no idea what the hell it really did to you, but as a Traveler, you learn that any words that sound pretty harsh on their own, get escalated to ten times worse when you add 'temporal' to them. I suppressed a shudder for the ideas that crossed through my mind then. "What does it do?"

"Riddle?" Alexius said, a slight catch in his tone and a small grimace pulling at his right cheek.

Riddle inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and letting a line crease his forehead before opening his eyes and explaining: "From what we'd seen of the illness – because it is an illness once it involves the biological form – we had inferred that Time had effectively not only found its way into the very most miniscule crevices in the human cells of a person, but _stayed_ there. You know how Time works when we Travel, right? How it relates to our physical forms?"

"It's like a residual radiation almost. But it doesn't hurt you because it seeps out little by little over a few days or hours depending on how far you went," I provided, nodding. Simple enough once you'd done it a few times.

"Right. Well, that's because of the protection Travelers have. It only allows for enough of Time to get into you so that your whole body can move between it. Take that away and you have the entire Vortex raping you basically."

"Nice," I scoffed and Alexius kept on grimacing.

"Anyway, with all that Time coursing through you, of course it will wreak havoc on your body. At first, it's small things: fainting spells and lapses in your day where you can't remember what you've done or – sometimes – you'll spaz and it takes you for a joyride to another time zone or period for a few hours or a few days. Then start the bigger things: bloody coughing fits, failing organs – that sort of thing. Then, finally, the demolecularizing stage." I didn't say anything but apparently I'd made a face worthy of one of those almost sneering smirks of his and a nod. "Yes. Just as nasty as it sounds. You're too weak by then to really move so you're forced to just lay and watch as your body falls apart – quite literally – molecule by molecule. At first, you don't even realize it because it's basically just the very outer layers of everything that slough off – a few tiny cells a day. Tiny; almost nonexistent. But then the process speeds up because Time only squares itself and there's only so much of the body left after it's already removed the dead cells and moves onto the living, nerve rich areas." This time I shuddered. "You should hear the screams."

Again, I suppressed a shudder as a question floated up to the surface of the dense silence that filled the room after Riddle's little explanation. "Is there a way to stop it? A cure?"

"You know, I didn't think there was," Riddle told me, shaking his head thoughtfully. "I'd already seen so many of our best and finest succumb to it. When it was my turn, all I could do was to try my best to move along and finish what I could for the cause."

"What? Wait," I sputtered and got to my feet, the cold floor instantly sending a spasm up my legs of reluctance. "You have this shit?" I asked him, stepping closer to him and reaching a hand out, not really knowing what I intended to do with it.

He glanced at my hand before taking it lightly in his and giving it a gentle but brief squeeze. "Had. Past tense."

"There's a cure."

"Apparently."

"But…. But I didn't _share_ my abilities with –"

Shaking his head, he cut across me, laughing a bit harshly. "No. No you didn't. That's not the issue. I was _never_ supposed to be susceptible to Demolecularization. It was never a risk that I faced because when you passed your Traveler abilities to me, I inherited them as if I'd been born a Traveler – mental and physiological capacities and all."

"So, how – ?"

His jaw clenched and he released my hand to cross his arms over his chest broodingly. "No idea. I was on my way to you in 1997 after dropping off my Sergeant –" Alexius cleared his throat a bit loudly and Riddle glanced a bit unfocusedly at him "– after dropping her off from 1917. I didn't get out of the Vortex, though, and was just turning straight toward 1997 when something latched onto me."

"You're sure you didn't see what it was?"

"A human," snapped Riddle, mordantly, at Alexius. Apparently, they'd had this discussion to tire already. "I don't know who it was. I was a bit busy trying not to throw us out in the middle of a volcano or something. Anyway," he turned back to me, "this person latched onto me and dragged me I don't even know where – some place my magic didn't serve me – to try to bash my head in with some kind of machete-looking piece."

"Machete?" I asked, my brows furrowing and shuddering again. Machetes scare me like you can't even imagine. Ridiculous, I know. Still….

He nodded and went on. "Cut me up good, I suppose. There was a lot of blood. Then he gave me a good knock with it and I was out. The next thing I remember is landing hard on concrete, at night, in an alleyway and then I black out again. After that, it's just a blur of the same person over and over again. Have you located them, by chance?" he asked Alexius who shook his head, his lips pursing in thought.

"I'll scour London next. They're not in New York."

"It was worth a shot looking. But, yeah, check London, Spain – I'd try Italy as well."

"For?"

"The man who provided a cure," he told me, eyeing me through half-lidded, calculative eyes. "Healer Villanueva."

And we'd come full circle. I nodded, inhaling and releasing the breath in a massive _whoosh_. "Do you know if Electra got away alright?"

"She's fine. I suppose you've worked out that there's more to them than meets the eye?" he asked, a hardening of the glint fracturing the red glimmer in his left eye so that it looked like a million tiny rupees had showered and embedded themselves there. Almost princely now, his face held an impassivity that sent a dull ache rolling into my stomach and instantly I knew I'd missed something big. "No, I suppose not," he muttered between his teeth, flicking his gaze over my face. "It's not particularly easy to note. Anyway," he moved on with a short sigh and a nonchalant wave of the hand. "He was able to reverse the damage done. It took some time, but once he'd sealed the tear that that maniac had ripped into my magic, it sort of scarred over and healed completely – or almost completely anyway. I'm still rather tired from the excess temporal energy running through me."

"You'd do best to go now and work that off before you start on Legilimency tomorrow."

"I've got time," Riddle answered curtly.

"You don't. Your Sergeant is awaiting orders for the next week and then instructions on what to do when you leave…among other things." So, Alexius couldn't tell subtlety from conspicuousness if it had slapped him in the face. All the same, I didn't really care what those two had to say to each other or what it had to do with. My mind raced with all that it had just taken in, and I barely heard Alexius when he said with a forceful finality, "Go. I'll take care of her."

"Just one more thing, _sir_," the emphasis on 'sir' brought a smirk to my lips as Riddle stepped forward and moved me gently back onto the edge of the bed. "It's best if you rest up as much as you can. The training isn't so easy if you haven't worked out regularly," he told me, smirking warmly and I returned it hesitantly.

My eyes passed over him quickly, furtively. I didn't want him to see me looking so closely but I still wanted a closer look. A tattoo on the inside of his left wrist; another on his right bicep; a thin, web-like work of lines – scars – just visible right above the collar of his t-shirt; a somewhat sickly pallor about him – recovering but not quite there. _Okay_, I thought, a bit relieved. _Okay. He's fine. He's alive. And I'm here….What difference does your being here make? ...If I'm here, then, if anything _does_ happen, well…I'm here…. Right. Because that makes _much_ more sense._

Continuing to smirk down at me, he reached his hand back toward his right, back pocket and, in a few thudding heartbeats, head produced a wand. _My_ wand.

"Bloody hell," I breathed, my smirk breaking and reforming into first a surprised 'o' and then stretching into a full blown smile.

He gave it to me and answered the question I had before I even spoke it. "You left it with Alexius on the island of Azkaban. He had it since then and, when we started searching for you, he gave it to me to help with the search. See?" he asked, as the wand, now reunited with its owner and having felt the familiar tug of my baser magic within the newer amalgamation, shot out a jet of silvery bright sparks between us. "It would have reacted in some way, shape or form as soon as it felt you near." I peered up at him confusedly, my brows furrowed and he, as expected, answered before I could get the question out. "I'm going to venture a guess that the night in the alleyway, you were coursing with adrenaline or something like that?" I nodded. "That's why it couldn't feel your older magic."

I nodded, again smiling hugely and rolled the piece of wood between my fingers. "I can't stand wandless magic," I uttered vaguely and he snickered.

"You're not used to it, is all."

"And you can teach her, Riddle. When you have the time. For now, go work that energy off before you relapse."

"Alright, alright. Don't get your knickers in a bunch," he said softly, calmly as he gave my shoulder a squeeze and walked to the door.

"Thanks," I murmured and watched him go, pressing the inside of his left wrist to a section of the wall and then punching in some code on a keypad that said section slid away to reveal.

"Okay," I said calmly, still rolling the wand, and looked Alexius in the eyes as the door slid closed behind Riddle. "Convince me."

And he didn't need me to explain, though I know I must for you.

Look…I know I owe you big time on the explanations and I haven't exactly tried, per se, to give them to you. I will, though. Promise. Right now. But, please, before any of that, just understand one thing, yeah? I only ever wanted to just move on. Nothing else. I just wanted to leave behind the mess we made of things and – and forget it all. Make like none of it ever happened. And I tried. I really did. And I guess, considering things, this whole new mess I've landed myself in (or was dragged into, however unjustly you might see the situation) starts there: from my trying so hard to forget and move on. Of course, I never did. Never could, could I? I mean, between the whole of Time and Space just gallivanting about in my skull and whatever the hell managed to find its way into me just slithering about inside me, waiting for random moments to pop out and force me into spaz mode, _how_ could I?

For a while (only a while, mind, because after I almost got myself killed by that bus I didn't right feel like getting faded anymore) I had Rex. But 'a while' – even with bus accidents, crushed ribs that punctured my lungs among other injuries and supposedly learned lessons – can last a very long time. Okay, so it took me the better part of a year to get my act together and stop trying to off myself without really trying to off myself. And it took until a bit after that to tell Rex to fuck off. That hurt, though, because, much like the drugs he would inject into my system, night after night, he'd found his way into it too. He'd managed to climb his way up the ranks of my social hierarchy from a simple drug dealer to something very much akin to a boyfriend or…I don't know, something equally important. It really fucking hurt to kick him out of my life and even more so to see how it stung him when I did. Still, like anyone who's taken the time to even observe me all this time, I did much better for myself without him.

After that, I stopped my bullshitting around and enrolled myself in a set of night courses to get my GED so I could go to college, at least, and keep myself busy and my head clear of timelines long enough to figure out what kept making me spaz out and start hissing in Parseltongue. See, I had periods of time where I would go days and days without seeing anything. No past. No future. Just the now. Quite peaceful, really. But then would come the days where the visions would come so strongly that a few could even cripple me and leave me craving not only Rex's arms but his supply as well. But, seeing as the days that I didn't see anything coincided with the days that I had the most work to do toward my courses for my GED and college prep, I figured, I may as well give it a shot. It worked. With most of my head busy with programming and logical math (and my hands busy, from time to time when I needed cash, waiting the few tables at Ray's), I actually found a way, between rest and school, to do my magical research as well.

I contacted the Bureau of Magical Regulation (with the cover that I was a witch with the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic of Great Britain, which seemed to confuse them a bit, and that I had a project to research) and asked what they knew of Time Travel. Of course, I got the same nonsense dribble about manmade Time Turners and whatnot from most of the Department of Etherealities and this disappointed me, which in turn disappointed them. They all tried their best, but couldn't seem to answer the questions I asked (ones that would strike the starkest contrast between normal witches and wizards and Travelers as soon as they answered). I'd just about given up when a young wizard, annoyed with me for my fickleness, suggested that I go and talk to someone called John. John, a spirited warlock in a fez, who seemed to me like no one had regarded him for anything practical in ages (much less something so _ethereal_ as Time Travel), apparently amidst his babblings had spoken of things similar to what I'd asked about (crossroads, circuits and fabrics). So, I spoke with John. John – John Smith (I really wish I was shitting you about his name) – turned up a Traveler from circa Alexius' time. He had a copy of Alexius' book. He gave me his copy of Alexius' book, telling me that I'd find my answers right in there, and bade me farewell, promising not to call the Coalition. And that never made sense until just today. I'd just taken the book and went on my merry way, thinking that the Traveler John Smith had had one too many loop runs and needed a fair break from Time overall. He had seemed so tired and, after reading Alexius' book and delving into my research for the next three years (while trying to maintain as normal a life as I could as it was what I wanted), I understood perfectly _why_.

My first read through of that little pamphlet-like book gleaned me nothing more than a headache from translating the ancient runes and an even stronger determination to never go back. Sure, it outlined a lot more of what Travelers could do with their gifts and that seemed pretty unfair to me at the time because, a lot of those things would have saved us all a fair bit of trouble not to mention heartache, which made me want to go back and do it all again – prepared, this time. But then I got around to the breakdown of the Traveler physiology and mental capabilities and capacities, which held several, ah, _deterring_ accounts relating to whatever particular malfunction he'd chosen to discuss in that section. By the end of that, I really just had no idea what the hell I'd existed as for so long, much less what I existed as now and what the hell had gone wrong. But I couldn't give up so easily on figuring out the Parseltongue thing as I had on Traveling. As the years passed and programming turned into something like a second nature for me, leaving more room for thought in my mind, I could feel the ripples and sharp jerks of the timelines in there trying to rip out and that scared me. Then again, I guess I also sort of wanted it to happen. The part of my mind that held the timelines was also the part of me that had been stuck in the Hall of Time with Chronos all those circuits, no? She would know, then, what the hell this whole thing was about, right? But I couldn't risk it. I held nothing against her, per se, I just didn't want the whole of Time and Space compacted coming along with her and turning me into the Pythia. Nope. Sorry.

So I forged on, rereading and rereading. At first the whole book and then just paragraphs that I remembered, once I got ancient rune translating down to a T. Still, even dissecting line after line about physiology and other complicated crap about my mental states at different points of my life as a Traveler, I couldn't figure it out. So, what did I do? I did what anyone else in my positions would do. I found more books relating to Time in general and started side by side reading and scribbling down random fruit-fly thoughts that would come to me in the dead of the night or in the middle of a class about the theories Alexius posed at the end of each section. See, not even he had this whole Traveler things figured out. Just the basics. But the basics gave me a start and I used them. I used them to add to his theories, making theories of my own and to keep myself focused, keep myself from slipping too much when, while out with Electra or Ray or whoever the hell else I decided to chill with, I would come across a mother and her child…or a kid on a scooter…perhaps a pregnant woman….

All the same, I never really found anything worth noting. Just theories that frustrated me more and more to the point where I would have to give myself pep talks constantly, reminding myself how bad I wanted to just understand and fix this so I could move on instead of ending up like John Smith in his fez. I guess, to some degree, you could say that what happened last night, in a very miniscule and almost not important (but extremely important and crucial to everything) way, saved my life.

So, what happened, right? Well, according to Alexius, and just overall _basically_, the Coalition went and screwed up operation: Blue Beach for the Militia. Basically. However, if one would want to dissect the nuances of this situation, then one would have to backtrack to when Chronos first ripped Riddle and me from the Vortex back when I tried to bring him with me.

"He knew then that you would destroy him. That you would bring down what he'd created so carefully," Alexius had explained.

"He told me – when we went up there, all of us – that I wasn't supposed to _be_, or something like that," I'd remembered. Alexius nodded. "What did he mean?"

"When you hear the prophecy it will make more sense. For now, just take it with a grain of salt, if you'd like: you weren't supposed to happen. But you did and he knew, from the moment you dared to break the Laws he'd set millennia ago, that you would be the one to bring him devastation. So, all that followed was just a result of that. He died, his reign fell and yours came."

"Not much of a reign," I'd huffed.

He had scoffed then and smirked. "We've been at war. Relax. Anyway, it's all just been like dominos: Chronos dies, war ensues, you go into hiding and the enemy wants hands on you. Simple as that. So, we had to keep an eye on you. But first we had to find you."

"How did you find me, by the way?"

"Had a little help, but, shhh, we're getting to the good part. Once we found you, we knew it was only a matter of time before we'd need you –"

"– of course –"

"Get over it. So, I sent Riddle after you – you wouldn't have trusted anyone else," he'd provided quickly when I raised an eyebrow at that and then I'd shrugged. "But, as you could tell from when you found him, he'd been indisposed. No, don't worry about leaving him there," he'd added quickly when I'd grimaced at the memory of me just up and walking away. (Now, thinking through all of the conversation and lining up the pieces – Riddle being hurt in that alleyway…him having been forcibly exposed to that fragmentation illness right before that, apparently…I felt even more guilty for having done it.) "Things could have gone much, much worse for him if you'd stayed with him or taken him somewhere yourself because you didn't know anything about Demolecularization."

"I tried to fix him up."

He'd glanced at Riddle then and nodded. "That may have helped," he'd told him and then turned back to me. "Anyway, we kept more or less in touch when he wasn't, you know, about to give in to fresh waves of Time spilling from himself. I told him to lay off working until he could hold his own and about a week ago, he sent word that he'd be on your tail again." He'd turned then, again, to Riddle and glared. "But he wasn't ready for it. He was quickly exhausted and would lose track of you." Surprisingly, Riddle had said nothing to that. He'd merely stared at the wall opposite him as Alexius continued. "It happened last night. He had eyes on you up until you went into Philosophy and then he fell offline. When he came to, you were already gone and that's when I got word that the operation had been compromised. The Fallen Wolf had sent its most vicious crewmen after you – the vilest of the Coalition."

"Fallen Wolf. Werewolves. Cheesy as fuck."

"Dangerous as Hell."

"Not disagreeing. Just saying it's cheesy."

He'd shrugged. "It was Lupin's idea, I hear."

"_Lupin_?"

He'd nodded solemnly. "Things are ass backward, Thalia. There's a reason beyond that for why we need you, but, I won't lie, that's part of it."

I'd shuddered. "So…so, wait. Lupin…Lupin captain's the ship?"

"He's commander, yes, but judging by the state of you and of…of the scene itself," he'd faltered then, and I only now understood that he'd most likely meant Electra, judging by what he said next. "...he went with the crew sent for you. He, uh, likes to keep his victims from running."

Suppressing a shudder, I'd asked, simply, "My leg?" He'd nodded and, piece by increasingly fucked up piece, it had all started to fall into place for me. So, warily, I asked, "What is it that you need me for?"

"Fixing the line, ultimately, but there's a bit more that you in particular come really handy for." I'd cocked an eyebrow and pursed my lips. He'd smiled faintly. "The Coalition wants you because of what you stand for and what you did. And they won't stop until they get you, we have this clear. But, and we'd guessed at this since they started getting desperate enough to purposely turn Travelers into beasts so as to have an upper hand against your physical form, if they can't get to you by any means they've tried so far, then they're willing to force the crown on you."

"What?"

"You are now what Chronos was to all Travelers," he'd explained stiffly, standing. "You can set Laws and dismantle them. But, no matter what, for the Laws that are in place, you are to uphold them."

"Yeah, yeah, Master of Time. I get it."

"No. You don't understand." He'd shaken his head and sighed in exasperation and a bit of defeat. "You uphold the Laws of Time Travel, you uphold the timelines and you reign. You, even in times of war, are still a queen, so to speak." I'd scoffed. "It's not funny, Thalia. You have to protect your people."

"My _people_," I'd done air quotes, "want me dead."

"No," he'd said, shaking his head dismally and grimacing sadly. "Travelers are still being born and coming into their own, Thalia. They still have no idea of what is out there and what is happening. They're being born into this," he'd jerked his hands around, gesturing around us. "Into war. They're innocent. They need guidance."

"Fine, find me them. Make copies of your book. Hand them out. I'll guide them. What's the big deal?"

He'd met my gaze then with his own diminished and cracked one. "It's not about them going Dark side, Thalia. No, the Coalition wants experienced and trained witches and wizards on their side, and for now, trust me, they have enough. No, now – now that they know you're here and fully aware of the situation – they'll want these new Travelers, yes. But not to make soldiers and enemies of ours out of them." He'd paused, possibly waiting for me to understand on my own.

And I had. I'd started to understand, if only just a bit, and I'd uttered, flatly, in response to the ugly and gruesome picture that had floated into my mind. "You're shitting me."

But now, with the same look he'd given me an hour or so ago, he nodded. "You still need convincing?"

"I just don't really get it. I mean, okay, we fucked things up and we need to fix them. That's all well and fine, Alexius. And," I added quickly as he opened his mouth to interrupt me. "I know. I know that it's my responsibility now. I have to protect those innocent ones. I will. I promise, I'll do whatever you ask of me for them because – because they never asked to be Travelers. They don't deserve to be hunted for a cause against someone they don't even know." I paused to take a deep breath and steady my nerves for I felt myself starting to shake, still thinking of the cruelty at hand. "But I see it in your eyes, man," I told him exasperatedly, shaking my head. "There's more to this."

He nodded. "There is. You're smart enough to guess at it." I shook my head but he nodded. "Just think. The line is, more or less, back where it was before 1943. You and Riddle are, once again, in the same year and place."

I grimaced, nerves all shot to hell, and felt myself start up the nervous twitching of my foot. "But…I mean, we don't _need_ to –"

"Thalia," he cut in quietly and gently. He laid his hand on my knee and looked me right in the eyes, gray into hazel-green. "Fixed points are fixed for a reason. Please, I'm begging you, don't go looking for the 'why'. Just leave them be."

"But we moved it."

"And look where we are and what's happened as a result."

"Would it have been any better if we had let it happen back then? Me and Riddle, terrorizing the world. Hiding from someone, something and my son…?" I trailed off, hearing my own voice crack and dropped my gaze, swallowing hard.

"Your son, Thalia, is your son. And Riddle's." He took my chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger, raising my face to meet his gaze. "Do you honestly think that anything could happen to him with you two around?" I tried to argue that. (Of course, I did. No one has eyes on them 24/7!) "Even if something were to happen to the two of you, with him being your son, you think he wouldn't find a way to survive? You don't think he's smart enough?"

I swallowed hard again, choking back the flow of arguments and the lump wanting to expand my throat. "You say that like he were here," I told him weakly and tried to smile.

He smiled and shrugged. "You and Riddle are here. He may as well be too." I scoffed a laugh. He continued to smile, but it weakened. "Try, Thalia."

I nodded. "Okay."

* * *

chismeando* - slang for gossiping.


End file.
